MACUL 2020: 25 Insanely Great Ways to Use Keynote

Watch this session virtually via Zoom. 

Whether on a Mac or on an iOS device, no app is more versatile than Keynote. This fast-paced session will detail 25 innovative ways Keynote can impact learning, ramp up student engagement, and add production value to anything you or your kids create. Whether it's creating professional-looking images, creating animated GIFs, high-end videos and a bunch of cool other stuff you'll never see Keynote as just Apple's version of PowerPoint ever again.

MACUL Conference session: Thursday, March 12, 2020, 1:00 PM - Vandenberg B
Follow-up time in up Amway lobby immediately following the session. 

MACUL 2020 Keynote Deck - iCloud

PDF version of session slides

Engage Learners with Ryan O'Donnell's Bevy of Templates

Whether it is a template to edit of a mock Time cover and article or it is a fake social media profile to doctor, the Templates section of Rocklin, California media-arts teacher Ryan O'Donnell's CreativeEdtech.Weebly.com is sure to hold a number of engaging activities you will find your kids can't enough of editing.

As part of my upcoming "25 Insanely Great Ways to Use Keynote" presentation at next week's MACUL conference, I wanted to include the George Washington Time template Ryan generously shares on his site. He creates them in Google Slides, but they can be downloaded and then used with PowerPoint or Keynote.

The main instructional idea behind the templates is that any content can be used for students to show their knowledge in a way far more creative than the standard typed report. Besides this George Washington one, there are a number of other magazine templates as well as some very clever social media profiles and posts templates.

During the #CreateWtihChrome holiday advent calendar that Ryan, Brian Briggs, Jen Giffin, and I hosted, Ryan created a template challenge. I chose to do a Twitter profile for fictional baseball player Crash Davis, from the marvelous movie Bull Durham. 

It was a lot of fun to go through the exercise and really analyze four characters from what is often correctly heralded as the greatest baseball movie ever made. It made me think about the depth of knowledge this activity would elicit from high schoolers analyzing a novel like To Kill a Mockingbird.

Check out Ryan's templates and lots of other great offerings at his website CreativeEdTech.Weebly.com.

#MACUL20: 25 Insanely Great Ways To Use Keynote

If you're attending the MACUL Conference in Grand Rapids, check out my session "25 Insanely Great Ways To Use Keynote" on Thursday, March 12 at 1:00 PM. It is scheduled for Vanderberg Room B in the Amway Grand Hotel. After the session, I will be available in the Apple corporate area to meet one-on-one or in small groups to keep the learning going.

Whether on a Mac or on an iOS device, no app is more versatile than Keynote. This fast-paced session will detail 25 innovative ways Keynote can impact learning, ramp up student engagement, and add production value to anything you or your kids create. Whether it's creating professional-looking images, creating animated GIFs, high-end videos and a bunch of cool other stuff you'll never see Keynote as just Apple's version of PowerPoint ever again.

Session slides and resources coming soon.

Turn Keynote into a 3D Design Studio

With the advent of a growing shape library in Keynote and virtually unlimited fonts (if you use the Mac version), the presentation application can be leveraged into a dynamite design tool...even for 3D printing.

For years I have been using Keynote for just about everything except slide shows. I create fun graphics for video production, t-shirt designs, as it is where I stop long before I fire up Photoshop. Now with a growing assortment of silhouette shapes and symbols, the creativity possibilities have increased exponentially.

Here is a quick workflow for turning Keynote creations on a screen into 3D printed reality.

1. Design in Keynote. Just make everything black so it will convert easily. Here I have designed a shark that will stand up on a small pedestal (to be added later in Tinkercad) with the words "Great White Shark" added to the base. Notice how I added some grass and star fish to liven up the design a bit. I did this one quickly on my iPad so fonts were limited but had I used the Mac version, I could have gotten a lot more in depth with my text designs. Note: Everything you create in Keynote will essentially be one object in the CAD program so it will all print at the same thickness. If you want objects to have differing thickness, just create separate slides for each individual part.

2. Export your slide as an image and then convert to a scalable vector graphic (.svg file). The easiest way I have found to do this to use is SVGcreator.com. It's a simple upload, automatic conversion, and download process.

3. Open your 3D design app or site of choice (I work mainly in Tinkercad.com) and import the .svg file or files you created from the converted slides.

Add any extra pieces you want and then assemble the pieces. I added a wedge piece for the base and then under my text, I slid a small rectangle that will help keep my text together. Eventually I will glue that printed text onto the front of the base.

4. Scale, adjust, and download for printing. Really, that is all there is to harnessing the tremendously creative power of Keynote into something you can actually pick up and handle.

Here is the final product as produced with our XYZPrinting DaVinci Mini Maker. Like most designs, this one too could use some refining. The text ended up being too small to be useful and a little poster putty went a long way to help our shark stay afloat. Still, this is a fun example of what Keynote, creativity and some free conversion tools can help you and your learners create. Think about all of the knowledge they

Amaze em with Emaze!

Do you know what's really awesome about having a teenager? No, it's not being encouraged to venture into the world of fancy pocket jeans. Having a personal guide to what's new on Netflix is cool but when it comes to the edtech world, I love when my daughter shows me a new site or app she's using at school.

That's how I discovered Emaze. It's like a mashup of the visual brilliance of Haiku Deck with the functionality of Google Slides all tossed together with the flexibility of Canva. Bottom line: it's a great way for users to create visual content beyond just the slide deck.

If you know me, you know I live by the motto, "if you can't make it in Keynote then you don't need it." In many situations however Keynote isn't always an option or even the best one, like when all kids have access to are Chromebooks. Yes, there's iCloud Keynote but even that can be a challenge with Apple Id's and such. Google Slides is tremendously functional too and I use that a lot. I'm not throwing those out of the digital tool box, I am just excited about what a great compliment emaze is  and that it is intuitive enough for kids in upper elementary to handle.

Here's how you get started.

Logging in is available through existing Google accounts so if your kids already have those, then there is no hassle with having to create a whole set of usernames and passwords. 

Because the site is so visually geared there may be a bit of initial distraction as students find rabbit holes to explore on their first visits. Plan for this ahead and make your introductory session as fun and explore time.

Once you and your kids are ready to get serious about creating content, you will find a variety of support videos for most tasks in Emaze. There is also a ton of inspiration within emaze as the site is full of shared work and templates. So, go check out what you can do. You'll be e-mazed!

Six Pins for fostering creativity

[caption id="attachment_312" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Six pins of projects I have used to foster creativity[/caption]

Adobe launched its Creativity in Education sweepstakes today. To enter all you have to do is follow Adobe's Education account and then pin six or fewer examples on your own "Creativity in Education" board of how you are fostering creativity in your classroom or school.

Check out the six  pins I just entered.

Spend a little time on design...and gain a lot

[caption id="attachment_273" align="alignleft" width="300"] logos designed by 4th and 5th graders[/caption]

For too long we have pushed creativity and artistic design in school off to the Friday afternoon back burner or for when the important "core" work was complete. There is a lot though in fostering creative projects that feeds directly into enhancing mathematical and literary pursuits.

This year our fourth and fifth graders are working in groups of four or five on a very lofty goal. Each team will cover a number of different school events from classroom activities to field trips to the Fun Night carnival. The groups will produce multimedia news segments that ultimately will be compiled into one long video yearbook.

In order to insure that we meet our "Real artists ship" mantra the students and I have flipped our mindset from treating our time together like school and instead treating it as if we are all working at video production companies. The first task was to form a production company name, complete with a logo.

The students' learning target was "I can create a company name and logo that convey intended feelings." We began by looking at a number of existing artistic companies' names and logos like those from Pixar, Dreamworks, Orion, Warner Brothers, and Bad Robot. Next as a class we discussed what feelings these names and trademarks elicit. The outcomes of inference as well as an understanding of "visual grammar" were immediate. As teams got to brainstorming, these concepts were front and center as each group paid close attention to what type of feelings would be associated with their potential names and designs.

From a teaching standpoint, I made several rounds to check on each group's progress and constantly challenged each team with questions like "If I had $3,000,000 to invest in a serious film about slavery ending in the 1860's would I choose a company called the 'Flaming Fireballs'?" There were some groups that started waaaaaay out past the left field bleachers but I eventually reeled them into at least short left field. As more and more teams honed in on a name we switched gears to designing logos. Each team had to create an old-fashion crayon and pencil concept that was our digital starting point as I conferenced intensely with each group.  I consistently helped teams simplify and asked, "What if?" seemingly over and over again. This was my chance to teach in small groups advanced Keynote techniques. I didn't want to override their creativity with my own but offered a suggestion here and there that most students really didn't know was possible. On many occasions I would add something as a demo and then delete it after showing it. Next,  I would leave the group to check on others. This allowed the group I had just left time to decide whether that was something to recreate themselves or stick with an original idea. The completion of each design was an electric moment for the kids and me.

In purely random order, here are some of the concepts and skills students developed and benefits experienced during this process.

• Collaboration


• Accountable Talk


• Showing rather than telling


• The way different fonts and colors affect a message


• Math concepts like proportions and scale


• An appreciation for the work


• An escape from the way school is always "done"


• Creative expression


• Compromise


• Motivation to tackle a big task


• Fun

The concepts of design and creativity may not show up explicitly written in any curriculum manual but spending a little bit of time on it will prepare students to tackle any part of the Common Core with the mindset of someone working on projects at Apple, Google, or Herman Miller. They will bring a keen eye and will expect to create with excellence.